DL Open Thread: Friday, September 6, 2024
I hereby take a timeout from moderating the blog to trying to write the daily Open Thread post. Moderating ain’t easy, especially when one is not a moderate. Can’t recall a year where there’s been more ‘working of the refs’. But, I digress.
Nobody Has Ever Seen The Likes Of This Trump Article Ever Before. Redundancy deliberate. This has been in my head forever, but didn’t think to write about it. Well, someone has:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. But don’t worry—nobody has, ever. Or at least, that’s what Donald Trump would say if asked about, well, anything. It’s the ex-president’s favorite locution.
“Groceries, food has gone up at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. We’ve never seen anything like it—50, 60, 70 percent,” Trump said recently. (This is not true, though if it were, it would be unlike anything seen in American history.)
Once you start looking for the phrase in Trump’s speeches and remarks, it’s everywhere. “You know what [Election Day]’s going to be called?” he told a religious group this spring. “Christian visibility day, when Christians turn out in numbers that nobody has ever seen before.” He uses a similar idiom—the exact wording does vary at times—to describe the economy as it was during his presidency (“We had the greatest economy in the history of the world. We had never done anything like it”), and as he says it will be: “We’re going to drill, baby, drill. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to do things like nobody has ever seen before. And we’re going to make our nation’s economy be the best ever in the world.”
Unlike some of Trump’s signature tics—“bigly,” “many people are saying,” “like a dog”—this one may not immediately come off as distinctive. But when I ran nobody has ever seen before through the ProQuest database, I found that about two-thirds of the roughly 1,500 occurrences were Trump’s. Among the ones that weren’t, most were literal, sometimes even accurate, instances: archival photos of the Monkees, new paleontological finds, Steph Curry statistical anomalies.
The use and abuse of the phrase illuminates Trump’s salesman instincts. The case is not only that Trump speaks in hyperbole, though he does. He also strives for novelty, telling people that whatever thing he’s hawking is entirely new to the human experience. This comes naturally, because he sees the world in absolutes and demonstrates very little interest in learning, so he may not actually know much about relevant comparisons.
Donald Trump’s sons want to turn their father’s growing bromance with the cryptocurrency industry into the new family business. So far, the project’s troubled rollout has succeeded in creating only one thing: a potential political liability for the former president.
Trump’s eldest sons — Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — have been teasing their plans to unveil a crypto startup called World Liberty Financial for weeks. But the launch has been marred in recent days by a series of apparent scams that have redirected fans to fake pages and compromised the social media accounts of other Trump relatives.
That has never happened with any Trump venture ever before. (Sometimes this stuff is just too easy.)
Wilmington: No More ‘Holding Cars For Ransom’. Maybe not a perfect settlement, but serious progress:
An ordinance before the Wilmington City Council could jump-start changes to ticketing and towing practices in Delaware’s largest city following a federal lawsuit over parking enforcement and booting practices.
The ordinance, sponsored by Councilperson Maria Cabrera, would empower the city’s finance director to waive all penalties, fines and fees associated with a vehicle if a tow company takes title of a car with the intention of scrapping or selling it. It’s expected to be the first in a series of policy changes spawned by the lawsuit.
The 18-page settlement shared with Delaware Online/The News Journal this week avoids a trial that was set to begin in July in U.S. District Court in Delaware.
A joint statement from the city and Institute for Justice attorneys, the latter representing Wilmington residents Shaheed and Dickerson, included in the court documents said the parties were pleased an agreement could be reached. The agreement also lays out that Wilmington will pay Shaheed $20,000 and Dickerson another $20,000 to settle the lawsuit against the city as well as paying the Institute for Justice attorneys $110,000.
Institute for Justice attorney Will Aronin said the new system makes sure “nobody loses their cars for parking tickets” by making sure “people never get in such a hole that they can’t get out.”
One important obstacle remains:
The Wilmington Fines and Fees Justice Team took issue with the ordinance not eliminating impoundment and immobilization of vehicles entirely, pointing to other states like Minnesota that have done away with using towing and impoundment as tools for parking enforcement.
“Other jurisdictions have already ended booting, towing, and impoundment of cars as a method of parking ticket enforcement, and it’s time Wilmington does the same,” said Lynne Kielhorn, a member of the Fines and Fees Justice Team, in the news release.
Aronin said eliminating impoundment practices couldn’t be ordered by the judge in the federal case, nor could the lawsuit force that change.
It can, and should, be added to the proposed ordinance.
What do you want to talk about?
First of all WHO THE F is the economic club of NY and how the hell did they let trump spew lunacy and not call him out on it? when the F is someone going to say “what?!?!?!” after he gives a completely unintelligent answer. In trump terms – my grandfather was a bomber pilot in wwII so that means i can probably drive the stealth bomber. this freaking shitshow of letting him spew nonsense and never being called out on anything is really F’ing old. Just one time some one question him on his business acumen by asking about DJT stock?!?!?
Seek help, please.
Spending some time (not much) poring through the 8-day campaign finance reports.
Some interesting stuff:
The Third Party Advertising PAC spending continues unabated.
Kyle Evans Gay outraised Bethany Hall-Long.
Personal to Sherry Dorsey Walker: Pretty sure the contribution limit for your race is $1200. You listed a contribution for $5500 from one Ina Patton. That’s over half of what you raised. You, uh, might want to adjust your report.
An oddity: Geno’s Steaks in Philly contributed $600 to Kathy McGuiness. Makes my cheesesteak choice easier…
I know it’s only $75, but why is NCC Democratic Councilman Brandon Toole contributing to Mike Ramone’s campaign?
More to follow…
From Wikipedia:
In June 2006, a sign on Geno’s window gained press notoriety during a national controversy over immigration. The sign reads: “This Is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING Please “SPEAK ENGLISH”.” The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations filed a discrimination complaint, arguing that Geno’s violated the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, which prohibits discrimination in public accommodation, by “denying service to someone because of his or her national origin, and having printed material making certain groups of people feel their patronage is unwelcome.” Vento had previously said the signs are directed at the Mexican immigrants in the surrounding neighborhood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geno%27s_Steaks
Looking at the reports in the 14th RD race, Marty has put over $80,000 into his race.
Is that his personal money, donors, or both?
BHL had one last fundraiser last night. At the esteemed Catherine Rooneys. Here is the host committee.
Here are the people not smart enough to find the exit. God bless them. Even Val and Mike Houghton were smart enough to keep their names off this list of ghouls and goblins.
Representative Mimi Minor-Brown, Shaku Bhaya,
Andrew and Jennifer Cottone, Dan Cruce & Bart Dryden, Victor du Pont,
The Honorable Charles “Bud” Freel, Dr. Sandy Gibney, Jack Holden,
The Honorable Kevin Kelly, Lynn Fuller, Lisa Maguire, The McCoy Family,
Bill Montgomery, Renee Cohen Purzycki, Yvette Santiago,
Angela Tsionas and Tony Matulas, Laura Wisniewski and Justin Wagner
Back from doing stuff. Let’s see what other nuggets I can find in the reports:
Why the fuck is the New Castle County Democratic Committee donating $2208 to the campaign of George Dudlek? REturn of a filing fee, maybe? If so, did they do the same for Kevin Caneco?
As a member of a Democratic RD Committee in NCC, we had no say in such a contribution. Which Party apologist will condescend to us THIS time?
Plus, isn’t that over the limit?
Lest you were curious, Betsy Maron maxed out to Val Longhurst.
Bob Williams’ finance report looks veryveryvery fishy. Pretty much all his contributions come from assorted LLC’s in Maryland. Some with the same, or similar addresses. Plus, isn’t $1500 above the legal campaign spending limit for that office? Pretty sure it’s $600. In fact, I KNOW that it is. Not that he’s gonna win or anything, but wouldn’t you think Williams’ behavior would for once conform to the law?
If you’d like to know anything about the NCC finance reports, feel free to reach out to me.
In the meantime, NCC Dems did NOT contribute to any candidate in this reporting period.
As a point of information, Delaware Code allows for political parties to contribute up to $5,000 to county council candidates in NCC. We did NOT make a contribution
An amended report will be filed by end of day Sunday.
Fair enough. Then why did that contribution that wasn’t a contribution show up?
More:
Janet Kilpatrick maxed out to George Dudlek. Just in case you were wondering who the developers are backing in this race.
If my eyes don’t deceive me, Trippi Congo has filed his annual reports for 2021, 2022, and 2023 FOR THE FIRST TIME. Isn’t that something the Department of Elections is, uh, supposed to track?
Perhaps just Congo is untrackable, as it appears that neither the Lt. Governor nor the State Auditor have adequately tracked the close to half a mill in Opioid Slush Fund $$’s that BHL has gifted him and his ‘project’ that doesn’t exist.
They do track it, and they post it. They’ve recently updated this page, because you used to be able to go further back than 2021. And I know I’ve seen Trippi on the list before (I don’t remember what filing years, though.) He’s on there now for 2021.
That site is here: https://elections.delaware.gov/candidates/campaignfinance/non_filers.shtml
Yikes, I really hope Kevin Caneco wins…
Karen Hartley Nagle received 8k in loans from Pinnacle Construction LLC.
She’s still going to lose. Fingers crossed that won’t be our only victory on Tuesday.
Is Matt Dougherty BHL’s new manager? That’s a pretty sweet payday i a month
Yes, I think so.
I’d demand a lot of money too if I knew the well was soon running dry.